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There has been much debate about the naming of the Gαq. However, the "q" in the name is arbitrarily named and does not stand for anything in particular. This nomenclature came from Micheal Strathmann and Mel Simon after their discovery of the protein class in 1989. Essentially, the q designation comes from the fact that Michael Strathmann couldn't use the front end of the alphabet "because those early letters were already reserved for a number of classes of subunits, the Gz designation had been taken and Gx seemed too obvious -- and so Gq."

It has been shown that Gq proteins are preassembled (pre-coupled) with Gq-coupled receptors (such as M3 receptor. The common polybasic domain in the C-tail of Gq-coupled receptors is necessary for the receptor-G protein preassembly.[2]